


Years Spent Lying Awake in the Dark

by 4sidedtrianglz (fallenalien)



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 06:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenalien/pseuds/4sidedtrianglz
Summary: Alex wakes up and he’s gasping for air. The air is thick and hot and his throat is hoarse so he’s left choking and sputtering. He opens his eyes and for the first time in a long time he sees blue, not red, blue. He can feel the ground underneath him and see the sky above, but none of it makes sense. His both feels heavy the way it does when you try to climb out of a pool with wet clothes on. Someone’s shouting his name and he turns his head through the smoking rubble he can make out a person.“Scott,” he tries to say but it comes out as a whisper.Scott almost cries the disbelief written all over his face, “Alex,”Alex Summers died on a midsummer day in late July of 1983 and yet over a decade later he finds himself re-awakened in a new decade where everything he knew had changed. His baby brother is now nearly his age while all his friends have now outgrown him. Now he must learn to readjust to the world around him and also rediscover who he is and what place he wants in it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so the X Men movie timeline is a bit wonky and hard to follow so I took some creative liberties while writing this. This fanfic takes place is 1992 which should be about a year before the events of Dark Phoenix. Alex in this fic is in his late 20s, about 27 ish while Xavier should be around 42 and Scott about 24. I am a long time fan of the X Men movies so I really hope yall enjoy this and feel free to comment. Also tags may change as I go along so I might still add in new ships and other tags relating to the piece as I write it.

Alex wakes up and he’s gasping for air. The air is thick and hot and his throat is hoarse so he’s left choking and sputtering. He opens his eyes and for the first time in a long time he sees blue, not red, blue. He can feel the ground underneath him and see the sky above, but none of it makes sense. His both feels heavy the way it does when you try to climb out of a pool with wet clothes on. Someone’s shouting his name and he turns his head through the smoking rubble he can make out a person. 

“Scott,” he tries to say but it comes out as a whisper.

“Alex,” Scott almost cries the disbelief written all over his face.

Alex coughs once more before he attempts, key word attempts, to get up. He distantly recognizes the fact that he’s naked as he struggles to his feet, but everything is distant and foggy and it feels like he’s moving in slow motion. Scott’s calling his name again but his voice sounds distorted and just as he finishes righting himself he finds himself swaying and suddenly his head is swimming and before he knows it the ground is rushing up to meet him. He groans and turns onto his back so he can see the sky, blue not red, before everything goes black. 

~*~

When he begins to awaken again, the world comes back in pieces. Little by little. The sound of people talking around. Movement behind closed eye lids. The chill of a cold room against. The cold is unfamiliar but not necessarily unpleasant. He comes to to the sound of beeping. His own pulse he realizes. He tries to open his eyes but the light in the room is too bright and he shuts the again. Other than the lights its nice in here he decides. As long as he keeps his eyes shut he should be fine. Better here than- Suddenly it all comes back to him. He sits abruptly and before he knows what’s happening he’s dry heaving on the tile floor. The smell of antiseptic hits him like a wave and the lights seem to be getting brighter by the second. He slips in his attempt to right himself with the bed and he the cool dry air feels like needles down his throat as he gasps for air like a fish out of water. The beeping on the other side of the room only increases the more panics which only seems to make him panic even more. 

"Oh God,"

Suddenly a woman rushes into and over to where he's still trying to pull himself off the floor. 

"Hey, don't try to move, you're still recovering,"

He looks up at her and begins but erupts in a violent coughing fit. The weight of the room feels like its bearing down on him and its only making it harder to breathe. Spots starts blurring his vision and he focuses on blinking them them away. His coughing fit dies down into a painful wheeze when the woman returns (he hadn't even noticed her leave) with a breathing machine. She puts the mask over his face and his wheeze dies down and he can breathe a little easier. 

"Alex," she says, "Alex, hey I need you to focus ok,"

His vision was still filled with spots and a thumping had started inside his head making it hard to concentrate. 

"Ok Alex we need to get you back up onto the bed, ok?"

He nodded despite not really knowing what was going on or what he was agreeing to. The woman waved her hand behind Alex's head and another person rushed over. He wanted to turn around to see where people kept coming from, but he was dizzy enough already and decided it was better not to push it. Together the two of them helped to lift him back onto the bed. He groaned as he laid back down on the bed. The lights were still too bright so he put his arm over his eyes to block it out, as they moved around him. 

"Can you turn the lights half off?" He heard the woman say from off to the side of him. He sensed the light in the room decrease significantly. He moved his hand away from his eyes and opened them slowly. The breathing mask was still over his face, but he was breathing steadily now and the beeping from the machine had slowed to a more constant pace. But his head was still thumping and his body felt heavy and tired. Still once he felt focused enough, he tried to speak. 

His voice came out hoarse as he asked, "Where am I?"

The woman came over to stand off to the side of him so he could see her face if he turned his head to the side. She took a deep breath before speaking. 

"Well, Alex," she started, "you're in the medical wing of Xavier Academy. I'm Doctor June Lin and I'm the head medical professional here and I've been handling you're care,"

Alex didn't respond and the doctor assumed he must be confused.

"I'm sure you have a lot of questi-,"

"What are you talking about?" Alex said looking at the woman suspiciously. 

The doctor didn't know how to respond to the question, but then Alex said. 

"Xavier Academy doesn't have a medical wing," Alex looked around confused, "not one that looks like this,"

The doctor swallowed, "About that, Alex-"

"How do you know my name? Where am I? What am I doing here? Scott," he suddenly began trying to get up more rapidly, "Where's Scott? Where's my brother?"

"Alex I need you to remain calm and keep laying down,"

She put her hands on his shoulders to try to ease him back down but yanked them away when she found he was hot to the touch. He sat up straight in the bed but had to stop there as the dizziness and thumping in his head reminded him why he'd been lying down in the first place. Pieces of memories were flying through his head once again making it hard to focus. 

"I need to get out of here," he whispered, mostly to himself. 

"Alex, you need to stay still," Doctor Lin said still trying to urge him to keep in the bed but not trying to touch him. 

"She's right, my friend," said a familiar voice. Alex looked around but couldn't find the source of the voice. It was only then that he realized that the voice was inside his head. 

"I'm sure this all must be very confusing for you and I must admit I've been struggling to wrap my head around it all myself," suddenly the door to the room opened and the source of the voice tolled in on his wheelchair, "Nevertheless I must say, it's good to see you again, Alex,"

"Charles."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first and last Scott and Alex really connected before he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will alternate between the events of past and present. This chapter takes place during X-Men Apocalypse after Scott got his powers on the car ride to Xavier Academy.

“Make sure to be careful you guys,”

Their mom hugged her sons one last time as they loaded the last of our things into the car. Her eyes were still red from crying, but her tears had long since stopped as she saw her sons off. Alex wanted to tell her that it wasn’t like Scott had gotten drafted and him going to Xavier Academy wasn’t as bad as he was sure she imagined it to be, but he was pretty sure the sentiment would be lost on her. Dad slammed shut the trunk and as he came back over, he was wringing his hands. They were both clearly uncomfortable, but just Alex steered Scott into the car, hoping he couldn't sense their hesitation. 

"You're being awfully quiet," Alex started. Scott didn't respond, he just kept his skull pressed against the headrest. They'd been driving in silence for a while now. It was hard to read his face with the bandage on, but Alex was pretty sure he could clue on to how Scott was feeling.

“I promise it’s not as bad as you think it’ll be,” Alex tried again. It’d be a 5 hour drive to Xavier Academy. The whole reason Alex had offered to drive was so he could prepare Alex and help him adjust a little before he arrived.

“Why couldn’t they come with us?” Scott asked quietly, his voice flat. Alex gripped the wheel a little tighter. 

“Well, they could. It’s just- Mom and Dad they’re not super comfortable with the whole mutant thing yet, you know. It’s not their fault really. Not many parents are, but I’m sure they’ll come around eventually,”

Alex cursed himself silently, he was no good at this. He didn’t have the panache Charles had when it came to convincing kids things would be okay when it seemed like their whole life had just gone to shit. Scott sighed deeply and pressed his head back even further. Just when it seemed like they’d be driving in silence for the rest of the ride he spoke up again. 

“What happened between you and mom and dad,” he said, “when you left, the first time?”

Alex didn’t say anything for a moment, caught off guard by the question. He swallowed hard.

“Did they kick you out?” 

“It was more complicated than that,”

“Then what happened? Why is it when you came back they had to pull all of your pictures out of storage like they hadn’t 7 years been pretending like you don’t exist.”

Alex took a deep breath and then let out a resigned sigh.

“Scott, when I got my powers it was a different time,” Alex started, “the term mutant was even a thing at the time. People like us weren’t really commonplace. I mean sure there were a few random cases here and there but none that people really knew about or believed.” 

Alex sighed again trying to find a good way to tell this story when it hadn’t ever really been one he’d wanted to tell. 

“When I first got my powers I was probably the same age as you, maybe a little younger. This was back when we lived in Michigan and one day I’d gone out with some friends and I got into a fight with some guy from school. I don’t even remember what it was about now. I just remember fighting then out of nowhere my skin heating up and I felt like I was one fire and this force just exploded out of me. I had no control over it. One moment everything was fine and then the next  
everything went red.”

Scott’s expression remained blank, but maybe if he could see his eyes, Alex would have seen the look of surprise on his face when he realized that what Alex had just described was nearly the same experience that he had gone through. Alex cleared his throat roughly as he tried to find a way to tell the next part of his story without making it seem as bad as it really was. 

"Yeah and like I said it was a different time then. There weren't exactly any fancy upstate schools for people like me to attend. People didn't even know what happened. I barely understood myself. All I knew was that I'd put 3 guys in the hospital. And one of them-" he cleared his throat again," one of them, um the guy I was fighting. He-he ended up dying later of injuries sustained. After that one thing just kinda led to another and before I could even wrap my mind around what had happened I was in a US Federal Prison for possession of a deadly explosive. Little did anyone know that I was the explosive."

"Jesus, Alex I-I had no idea,"

"It's okay. It was a long time ago,"

In that moment, Alex realized that it hadn’t actually been that long. It was strange to think that not even a decade had passed and yet his life had changed so much. He was almost completely unrecognizable to the person he'd been all those years ago. 

"Uh yeah so I'd been in prison for almost two years when I met Charles. At that point, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was going to spend the rest of my life in a prison cell. I thought that it was what was for the best. That it was the only way to keep people safe from me. I thought that I deserved it. But then Charles showed up and he showed me that I could be more than just some dangerous destructive force that I could actually use my powers to help people and not just hurt them. And that I wasn’t the only one out there and that others like me. And I owe him for that. I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I never met Charles Xavier."

Scott nodded but didn’t say anything. 

"I'm not telling you all this to lecture you or anything or to say that it could be worse. And I'm not saying that Xavier Academy is gonna be heaven on Earth or the best place ever. I'm just saying if you go into this mourning the death of your old life, you might miss the chance at having an equally amazing new life. You're never getting your old life back and it sucks but it's not the end of the world. You still have the chance to do something really special. Xavier is always saying this one quote um it goes "a curse is only a curse if you chose not to make it a gift" or something like that I don’t know."

Scott just nodded again, but this time the hints of a smile peeked through his lips and he relaxed slightly as if he realized he wasn’t on his way to the electric chair. 

"What about mom and dad? How did you get okay with them again?"

"Um I mean it was after Vietnam and I just kinda felt like life was too short and that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life knowing my parents hated me without at least trying to make up with them. I guess they just kinda felt the same way."

"I didn't know you fought in Vietnam."

"It was a couple years back-"

They spent the rest of the ride trading stories as Alex recounted the significant moments in his life as a mutant. Alex realized that this was probably the first time in years that he'd really gotten a chance to talk with his brother and as Scott warmed up to him and the idea of being a mutant, Alex realized how excited he was to have gotten this chance at his family back. He's glad that their mom and dad have accepted him enough to let Scott go to the Xavier school even if they haven't accepted the idea of mutants all together. He's especially glad that he was able to repair the relationship he had with his parents and how it had inadvertently spared Scott the ostracization he'd faced with them when he'd first gotten his powers. They pulled into the school, having gotten to know each other better in those 5 hours than nearly their entire lives. 

"Hey Scott,"

"Yeah"

"Just know that no matter what happens, I'll always be here for you. I've got your back."

The smile of Scott's face was genuine as he replied, "Thanks Alex, for everything."


End file.
